Some history:

Monetary unions are nothing new. Although the Euro represents an economic experiment at a grandiose scale (it involves 301 million people that produce 6.6 trillion US Dollars worth of goods and services in 12 different countries) there are successful historical examples of other monetary unification processes:

• Germany transformed its internal customs union (Zollverein) into an actual economic union over a period of fifty-four years (1834-1888.) Until the introduction of the Reichmark in 1871 thalers and guilders were coined according to common guidelines set by currency agreements. The introduction of the gold currency in 1873 became fully effective in 1907 because until then silver coins retained their value.
  
• The United States, after two unsuccessful attempts (1791 and 1816) at creating a European-style central bank, developed in 1913 the Federal Reserve Bank system that we see today. Before that, the federal government was only in charge of minting gold and silver coins, while state-chartered commercial banks could freely issue paper money. Not until 1914 we started seeing the now familiar greenbacks.

NOTE: At the time, none of these monetary unions could be properly described as a optimum currency area and -what is yet more amazing, they both used currencies based on the gold standard (paper currency redeemable for gold.)

It has taken the European Union (then the European Common Market) forty-five years to evolve from a customs union into a free trade area and later into an economic union. This is a brief timetable:

• 1957 - Treaty of Rome: establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC), a common market that includes West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
  
• 1967 - The Merger Treaty: fuses the executives of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the  European Economic Community (EEC), and the European Atomic Energy Commission (Euratom.) The European Community (EC) is formed. 
  
• 1972 - 1973: Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom join the European Community.
  
• 1979 - The European Monetary System (EMS) begins to operate based on the European Currency Unit (ECU). The ECU was a weighted average of the currencies of the EMS member nations. Exchange rate fluctuation bands among member currencies are established.
  
• 1981: Greece joins the the European Community.
  
• 1986: Portugal and Spain join the the European Community.
  
• 1987 - Single European Act: road map towards a fully unified market by the end of 1992.
  
• 1990: German reunification.
  
• 1992 - The Maastricht Treaty: the European Community (EC) is transformed into the European Union (EU). The treaty calls for a monetary union and has to be approved by each participating country either by popular referendum or parliamentary debate.
  
• 1993: The European Monetary System (EMS) collapses. By now, the convergence process set by the Maastricht Treaty is well under way.
  
• 1995: Austria, Sweden, and Finland join the the European Union.
  
• 1998: The European Monetary Union (EMU) is established. It comprises the fifteen European Union members except Greece (that did not comply with the convergence criteria), the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden (that chose not to participate.)
  
• 1999: The exchange rates of the participating European currencies with respect to the Euro are fixed. The Euro is born as an accounting unit and is traded in foreign exchange markets.
  
• 2002: The Euro replaces the domestic currencies of the participating countries.

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